rainbow six siege feature 3

Ubisoft adds Vulkan support to Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege to improve graphical performance


Ubisoft has announced that patch 4.3 will add support for the Vulkan API in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege. This new API promises to further improve graphical performance, and help to reduce CPU and GPU cost. As such, CPU-limited PC systems will most likely see a performance boost via this API.

What’s interesting to note here is that Ubisoft has evaluated DirectX 12, but decided to choose Vulkan over it. According to the team, its internal tests showed better CPU performance under Vulkan.

The key tech features that Vulkan brings to the table are: Dynamic Texture Indexing, Render Target Aliasing and Async Compute. Dynamic Texture Indexing will help reduce CPU overhead by issuing fewer draw calls. On the other hand, Render Target Aliasing will allow Ubisoft to implement dynamic render scaling for PC which dynamically adjusts the scaling ratio depending on the GPU workload. Lastly, Async Compute will allow to execute tasks in parallel on the GPU, thus providing more tools and opportunities for better and improved optimization.

Ubisoft concluded:

“The Vulkan API provides advantages over DirectX 11 that can help Rainbow Six Siege improve graphical performance. Moreover, Vulkan as a newer API has benefits that will help to reduce CPU and GPU cost, as well as support for more modern features that can open the door to more new and exciting things in the future. With patch 4.3, we’ll be releasing Vulkan to live for PC for broader testing.”

Now while this is great, I’d really like to see the Vulkan API in more CPU intense Ubisoft titles. Games like Assassin’s Creed: Origins, Odyssey and Watch_Dogs 2 would benefit from it. Still, it’s exciting witnessing Ubisoft’s games supporting both Vulkan (Rainbow Six Siege) and DirectX 12 (The Division 2).

Vulkan in Rainbow 6 Siege - NGON